Computer architecture and method for supporting and analyzing electronic commerce over the world wide web for commerce service providers and/or internet service providers

Abstract

A computer system that supports and analyzes Internet and / or electronic commerce data includes at least one user station transmitting a user request, and at least one Internet server, connectable to the user station, and providing the user station access to external data sources. The computer system also includes at least one data collection and analysis system. The data collection and analysis system includes at least one analysis module performing statistical and analytical analysis of the Internet and / or electronic commerce data for use by a user in performing one or more business decisions, and at least one Internet and / or electronic commerce data warehouse which is responsively connected to the analysis module and separated from external systems. The data warehouse receives the Internet and / or electronic commerce data, and provides access to the Internet and / or electronic commerce data by the user. The data collection and analysis system also includes at least one data mapping module which searches, collects and transforms the Internet and / or electronic commerce data, and transmits the same to the data warehouse for storage.

Description

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0001]1. Field of the Invention[0002]The present invention is generally related to a computer architecture and method for supporting and analyzing Internet and / or electronic commerce over or from the World Wide Web for commerce service providers (CSPs) and / or Internet service providers (ISPs), and more particularly, to a computer architecture and method for supporting and analyzing Internet and / or electronic commerce over or from the World Wide Web for CSPs / ISPs by correlating user, application, and access functions.[0003]2. Background of the Related Art[0004]More and more people are using the Internet as a method of communicating, advertising and shopping for and purchasing goods. The sale of Internet services is growing at an amazing rate. The number of projected users into the year 2000 is dramatically impacting the communications industry both from the standpoint of an opportunity to realize new business and as a concern due to the potential loss of tr...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0015]To overcome the above-detailed disadvantages and shortcomings of the prior art, it is a feature and advantage of the present invention to effectively collect the data and / or provide useful marketing information indicative of the events occurring on the web.

Problems solved by technology

However, the sheer amount of available information is posing increasingly more difficult challenges to conventional approaches.

A major difficulty to overcome is that information contained on the web or web pages are often dispersed across the network at many sites.

It is often time-consuming for a user to visit all these sites.

Search engines, however, have their drawbacks.

In particular, they are not well-suited to indexing information contained in structured databases, e.g. relational databases, voice related information, audio related information, and the like.

Moreover, mixing data from incompatible data sources is difficult in conventional search engines.

Another disadvantage with conventional search engines is that irrelevant information is aggregated with relevant information.

Unfortunately, conventional architectures and / or techniques are unable to organize and present this information in an efficient manner.

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